The term buccaneer is now used generally as a
synonym for pirate. Originally, buccaneer crews were larger, more
apt to attack coastal cities, and more localized to the Caribbean
than later pirate crews who sailed to the Indian Ocean on the
Pirate
Round in the late 17th century.

About 1630, some Frenchmen who were driven away
from the island of Hispaniola fled to nearby Tortuga. The
Spaniards tried to drive them out of Tortuga, but the buccaneers
were joined by many other French, Dutch and English and turned to
piracy against Spanish shipping, generally using small craft to
attack galleons in the
vicinity of the Windward
Passage. Finally they became so strong that they even sailed to
the mainland of Spanish
America and sacked cities.

English settlers occupying Jamaica began to
spread the name buccaneers with the meaning of pirates or
privateers. The name became universally adopted later in 1684 when
the first English translation of Alexandre
Exquemelin's book The Buccaneers of America was
published.

Viewed from London, buccaneering was a low-budget
way to wage war on Britain's rival, Spain. So, the English crown
licensed buccaneers as "privateers", legalizing their operations in
return for a share of their profits. The buccaneers were invited by
Jamaica's Governor Thomas
Modyford to base ships at Port Royal.
The buccaneers robbed French, Dutch and Spanish shipping and
colonies, and returned to Port Royal with their plunder, making the
city the most prosperous in the West Indies.
There even were navy officers sent to lead the buccaneers, such as
Christopher
Myngs. Their activities went on irrespective of whether England
happened to be at war with Spain, the United
Provinces or France.

Among the leaders of the buccaneers was a
Frenchman named Daniel
Montbars, who destroyed so many Spanish ships and killed so
many Spaniards that he was called "the Exterminator". Another noted
leader was a Welshman named Henry
Morgan, who sacked Maracaibo, Portobello, and Panama City,
stealing a huge amount from the Spanish. Morgan became rich and
went back to England, where he was knighted by Charles
II.

In the 1690s, the old buccaneering ways began to
die out, as European governments began to discard the policy of "no
peace beyond the Line." Buccaneers were hard to control and might
embroil their colonies in unwanted wars. Notably, at the 1697 joint
French-buccaneer siege
of Cartagena, the buccaneers and the French regulars parted on
extremely bitter terms. Less tolerated by local Caribbean
officials, buccaneers increasingly turned to legal work or else
joined regular pirate crews who sought plunder in the Indian Ocean,
the east coast of North America, or West Africa as well as in the
Caribbean.

Legal status

The status of buccaneers as pirates or
privateers was ambiguous. As a rule, the buccaneers called
themselves privateers, and many sailed under the protection of a
letter of
marque granted by British or French authorities. Henry Morgan
in particular had some form of legal cover for all of his
attacks.

Nevertheless, these rough men had little concern
for legal niceties, and exploited every opportunity to pillage
Spanish targets, whether or not a letter of marque were available.
Many of the letters of marque used by buccaneers were legally
invalid, and any form of legal paper in that illiterate age might
be passed off as a letter of marque. Furthermore, even those
buccaneers that had valid letters of marque often failed to observe
their terms; Morgan's 1671 attack on Panama, for instance, was not
at all authorized by his commission from the governor of
Jamaica.

The legal status of buccaneers was still further
obscured by the practice of the Spanish authorities, who regarded
them as heretics and interlopers, and thus hanged or garrotted
captured buccaneers entirely without regard to whether their
attacks were licensed by French or English monarchs.

Simultaneously, French and English governors
tended to turn a blind eye to the buccaneers' depredations against
the Spanish, even when unlicensed. But as Spanish power waned
toward the end of the 17th century, the buccaneers' attacks began
to disrupt France and England's merchant traffic with Spanish
America. Merchants who had previously regarded the buccaneers as a
defense against Spain now saw them as a threat to commerce, and
colonial authorities grew hostile. This change in political
atmosphere, more than anything else, put an end to
buccaneering.

Buccaneer culture

A hundred years before the French
Revolution, the buccaneer companies were run on lines in which
liberty, equality and brotherhood were the rule,
although only for white members of the crew. In a buccaneer ship,
the captain was elected and could be deposed by the votes of the
crew. The crew, and not the captain, decided the destination of
each voyage and whether to attack a particular ship. The
buccaneers' democratic model was adopted by many later pirate
crews.

Spoils were evenly divided into shares; the
captain received an agreed amount for the ship, plus a portion of
the share of the prize money,
usually five or six shares. Crews generally had no regular wages,
being paid only from their shares of the plunder, a system called
"no purchase, no pay" by Modyford or "no prey, no pay" by
Exquemelin. There was a strong esprit de corps among buccaneers.
This, combined with overwhelming numbers, allowed them to win sea
battles and shore raids. There was also, for some time, a social
insurance system guaranteeing compensation for battle wounds at a
worked-out scale.

A common myth about buccaneers is that they were
racially egalitarian
and liberated slaves
when capturing slave ships. In fact, buccaneers fully participated
in the slave society of their time, selling slaves as captured
booty and even giving
slaves to wounded buccaneers as compensation. Nevertheless, it is
quite true that the relationship between officers and men among the
buccaneers was much more egalitarian than that aboard merchant or
naval vessels of the time.

Warfare

Naval

Buccaneers initially used small boats to attack
Spanish galleons surreptitiously, often at night, and climb aboard
before the alarm could be raised. Buccaneers were expert marksmen and would quickly kill
the helmsman and any
officers aboard. Buccaneers' reputation as cruel pirates grew until
most victims would surrender, hoping they would not be
killed.

Land

When buccaneers raided towns, they did not sail into
port and bombard the defenses, as naval forces typically did.
Instead, they secretly beached their ships out of sight of their
target, marched overland, and attacked the towns from the landward
side, which was usually less fortified. Their raids relied on
mainly two things: surprise and speed. One such example is of
Sir Henry Morgan's raid on Portobello.